Robotics, Automation, Transportation

Watching birds and bees in slow-motion flight is like witnessing an impressive display of aerial ballet – they are capable of acrobatic manoeuvres, swooping past obstacles and correcting their flight path with ease.

Remember the adorable droid C-3PO from the Star Wars movies? Envision something along similar lines and you have ‘Atlas’. Sci-fi is no more just a fantasy!

Robots are getting more and more advanced but it’s generally accepted they have yet to match up too many of their natural counterparts. The GRASP Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania intend to change all that. Led by Vijay Kumar, the team have created a tiny robot inspired by the stag beetle.

The Cooki robotic chef, together with the food ecosystem Foodi from the small startup company Sereneti Kitchen, is the technology that many are waiting for to gain confidence when entering the kitchen. All you have to do is to provide the ingredients to Cooki and just wait for your ready meal!

When you’re bound by domestic duties, have fallen prey to weather changes or are constrained by location in general but still have an important meeting and office gathering to attend, what do you do?

The Iranian Center for Advanced Systems and Technologies (CAST) from University of Teheran has recently publically unveiled Surrena III, a very advanced adult-sized humanoid robot, who can walk, run, speak and recognize people.

The mindset of children, aged about 0-14, requires intricate nurturing and support in order for them to flourish into well-rounded individuals, complete with a certain social behavior and knowledge to match current day progress.

What if your clothes doubled as a modern computer? Indeed a thought provoking idea that is on its way to becoming reality and truly defining the term ‘wearable electronics’!

In a world where many of us feel as though we never have enough time to achieve all our goals for the week, we often look for ways to make our chores quicker or more enjoyable. Many companies are therefore seeing an increasing gap in the market and designing innovative technology with the aim of giving us more time to spend with loved ones or on hobbies, as opposed to doing the chores such as vacuuming or ironing.

When thinking of arts, words like tradition, culture, inspiration, feelings and talent come into our mind, and are automatically linked to the human condition. For Human Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers, performing arts translates into just another means to learn, evolve, express oneself and… communicate with an artificially intelligent entity, either a robot or a software agent.

In the future, it is anticipated that robots may have to traverse some pretty inhospitable terrain, either to clear a war-torn region of landmines or scope out a location on Mars for a potential landing site. Many robots designed for remote work are either wheeled or have tracked systems. Whilst this is obviously an advantage for stability, problems arise when the robot encounters any sort of challenging terrain such as steep, potentially unstable rocks.

Over the years, anthropomorphism, the process of giving life to non-humans, has developed into a genre in plastics and medicine that one could have never imagined before!